A lot of the disagreement by me with this thread is my Accounting and IRS training. Which define a merit source act as a signature manager as a conflict of interest.
Yes, I believe that's because of your accounting and IRS training, however in actual there won't be conflict of interest. If you notice the merit history of Icopress then you can easily observe that he gets more than enough merits and in all of the signature campaigns that he manages, he never asks for number of merits a member earned in past 120 days.
He mostly accept the members based on their posting habits not based on the number of merits earned, and if we keep that in our mind then I'm sure there won't be any conflict of interest even if he becomes a merit source and give merits to the valuable posts of the members who are part of the signature campaigns that he's managing.
I have read his post and cannot work out why you seem to have concluded anything from his comments equating to you giving merits to icopress (or anyone else) in order to support him.
If I'm not wrong then it's a generous act by philipma1957 to support Icopress with merits so he may get some sMerits that he could send to the deserving posts. That's what came in my mind, I could be wrong but it's an act of generosity and support from philipma1957 I believe. If I'm not wrong then philipma1957 also believes that Icopress is doing great job for the forum and that could be another reason why he's sending those merits to Icopress.