Bottom Line

• TECHNOLOGY. Franklin Square Group has added the virtual and augmented reality startup Magic Leap Inc. to its roster. Lobbyists will be meeting with lawmakers to provide “general education” about the new technology, which industry experts say could generate $150 billion in revenue by 2020. Google and various venture capital firms have backed Magic Leap, which specializes in the augmented reality technology that combines virtual objects and the real world through high-tech glasses. 

• LABOR. Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) is lobbying for United Association, a trade union for the plumbing, pipefitting, refrigeration and fire sprinkler industries. Now an advocate at law and lobby firm Hogan Lovells, Coleman will be consulting his client on issues including “pension reform, prevailing wage and national energy policy,” according to disclosure forms. Unions attacked the former Minnesota senator during his failed reelection bid in 2008 for opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made it easier for employees to unionize.

{mosads}• TERRORISM. Morris J. Amitay PC, a law firm run by former State Department official Morris Amitay, has been retained to represent the victims of terrorism in East Africa. The account deals with U.S. government officials who were killed or injured in a series of 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Amitay, who also served as the executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) from 1974 to 1980, will seek compensation for victims of the attacks and their families.  

• INSURANCE. The National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association hired lobbyists at The Madison Group to work on issues regarding “life insurance, death insurance and foreign-made caskets.” There is dispute between the three top domestic casket manufacturers, which produce 90 percent of the caskets buried in the United States, and online or foreign casket retailers. Although the Federal Trade Commission passed a rule in 1984 allowing consumers to use caskets purchased outside of funeral homes, critics say it is still hard for entrepreneurs to break into the $1.5 billion market.